iPhone and BlackBerry: IT Managers Guide To Managing Personal Devices in the Enterprise

Overview: You can’t avoid it any longer: Developing a strategy for managing and securing employees’ personal mobile devices. iPhone and Google Android devices are joining BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile smartphones in the workplace, and their numbers are only increasing. Regardless of whether corporate policy allows them, workers are still bringing their personal devices into the office.

According to a recent Forrester Research report, almost half of U.S. and European businesses surveyed are embracing the notion of allowing personally-owned devices access to secure networks. One-quarter of businesses surveyed do provide full support to some personal devices, and another 21 percent provide at least limited support.

What these companies are realizing is that if they allow employees with personally owned devices to access corporate email and other resources, they will be more productive. In addition, in today’s economic times, enabling personal devices helps companies offload some of the cost because users are paying for these devices themselves.

Corporate IT departments naturally are cautious about opening up the network and allowing full access to any device. IT needs control over how and under what circumstances mobile devices can access corporate systems. Finding just the right balance—maintaining the integrity and security of the network while allowing easy access to the applications users need to be more productive—will give organizations a competitive advantage in the coming years.

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